HEAR ME OUT - WHY PLAYING WITHOUT HITSOUNDS MAY LEAD TO BETTER ACCURACY ON SOME MAPS. This is all based on my personal extrapolation and i have no deep technical understanding of how this stuff works in osu so take it with a grain of salt

so in a beatmap you have the ACTUAL timing of the song/mp3 itself, and the map hit timing. to decide when to tap your keyboard in order to be on time, you need a certain input to your brain - which would be the song and previous hitsounds. however these two can provide conflicting information when deciding when to hit a note.

so for this drawing imagine each note is 50 ms apart and you know you need to hit them at that interval



now this doesnt apply to sliders because they are queued to always slide at a certain time regardless of when you hit it so when you do hit it instead of starting the hitsound it just "reveals" it. single notes are a different story though.

so when deciding to hit a note this ends up being the information provided to your brain pretty much



Now obviously because this is assuming your hits are literally perfect, it can get messier than this. while your input and audio latency remain constant, you will hit notes early or late leading to an even bigger and even more inconsistent discrepancy between hitsound and real song timing.



I don't need to draw an image for this but this is why turning off hitsounds may be beneficial. Instead of providing conflicting timing information you only have one consistent source being the song instead of your inconsistent input. this is only really viable for maps that don't excessively rely on hitsound and you can draw the timing from the song itself.

i always have to adjust my timing offset when i turn hitsounds off by like -30 global cause i really tune into the song more and sometimes i take my headphones off one ear and use my keyboard as the "hitsounds" (though this does introduce the inconsistent nature of human input there is no latency/delay)

dont know if this is already well known but let me know what you guys think

i don't feel that the multiple information sources thing really is a thing, since for me at least, the hitsounds only convey additional information whenever i'm offbeat, since that's when they stick out the most, and it's easy to figure out what to do with that information (if it sounds early, hit later, and vice versa). the same idea goes for using no hitsounds, except your brain doesn't have to insert a negative offset on your actions to combat the inherent offset of using hitsounds. the situation in the first diagram would only happen if you just weren't paying attention to the music compared to the hitsounds at all.

I was trying to find info about doing this because I thought I might have to, and I can see how it makes sense. I've been playing with ~40ms offset for like 8 months now and only just realised, I thought it was fine because I had device effects turned off, no realtek, using motherboard direct audio etc. but I just cant fix it so I'm either sticking with what I'm familiar with or playing with offset fixed and no hitsounds, since if I use universal offset then hitsounds are delayed, and theres no way to adjust hitsound offset currently. There are some songs that this could really help in, ones with consistent instruments that could be used as "replacements" for hitsounds, and also the keyboard thing, and seeing an analysis like this helps so I'll try it a bit more, thanks!

Interesting take but I have to respectfully disagree.
Turning off hitsounds might feel like it’s helping, but the core issue here seems to be a misunderstanding of how and timing actually work in osu.

Hitsounds don’t introduce conflicting information they provide real-time about your own accuracy.
If your hitsounds sound early or late compared to the music, that’s not a flaw it’s a feature that tells you how to adjust, relying only on the song assumes your internal timing is already perfect, but it’s not.

That’s why consistent auditory (like hitsounds) is critical for improvement, you're removing a valuable tool not because it causes inaccuracy but because it reveals it.

As for using keyboard clacks as a hitsound substitute that’s just a worse version of actual hitsounds, with more variance and no control over volume or pitch.

Hitsounds aren’t the problem inconsistent timing and lack of processing are.
Rather than turning them off, it’s much more effective to learn how to interpret them properly.

Well I do turn off hs when I'm playing mania cause that many notes can cause me to fail figuring out the real rhythm. However, I play better in std when turning on hs so that I can tell whether I'm early or lat.

I tried ts with Plasma's skins a while ago, but instead of improving, my accuracy actually dropped significantly—so I guess it all comes down to personal preference.